


his red right hand to plague us

by carmen



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Addiction, Additional Warnings Apply, Alternate Universe - College/University, Breathplay, Drug Use, Edgeplay, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Jim Moriarty: Manic Pixie Nightmare Boy, M/M, Partner Abuse, Pining, Texting, Unsafe Sex, Whump, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-09
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-01-08 02:34:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 10,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1127322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carmen/pseuds/carmen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock manages to trade in one bad thing for a worse one, several times over. Trying to soothe the discomfort of an unrequited attraction by dallying with a boy like Jim is just the start.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This one comes with a veritable heap of warnings, not all of which appear in the first chapter; these can be found in the endnote. If you're concerned, please check that endnote out; things got pretty rough. Written for [this prompt](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/21766.html?thread=129442054#t129442054).
> 
> ETA: This fic now has an associated fanmix! ["dynamics of a falling star" on 8tracks](http://8tracks.com/skabritches/dynamics-of-a-falling-star)

> _FAUSTUS: What art thou, the third?_
> 
> _WRATH: I am Wrath. I had neither father nor mother: I leapt out of a lion's mouth when I was scarce half-an-hour old; and ever since I have run up and down the world with this case of rapiers, wounding myself when I had nobody to fight withal. I was born in hell; and look to it, for some of you shall be my father._  
> 

* * *

The problem of John Watson presents itself, and the solution swiftly follows. Somehow it took root in him without his consent, which seems completely un-sporting; love is a point of entry. All attempts to uproot it or to scour it out have failed and the only course of action is to overwrite it with something else. Love isn't a fix; love is the burning _need_ for the fix that jangles down his nerves like a tornado through an Aeolian harp and leaves him gasping for some reprieve from this chorus of misery; a chord built up out of the way his hair lies in little whorls on his head to the way he rolls up his jumper-sleeves to the maddening erotic jolt when their hands accidentally touch, when John's body is in any proximity to his own. Love makes him itch in his skin and leaves him aching in his sleep. The only fix for anything as insidious and unbearable as love is something blunt as a hammer-strike. If John is a dull scalpel, scraping at his insides in the attempt to be helpful, Jim is a bullet.

Approaching him at all is a mistake. He just doesn't know how big of one until later.

He's heard Jim's name around, mostly in conjunction with prize-winning writing; he's kept his head down, worked diligently, and yet still left a significant fraction of the administration pissed off at him for reasons they couldn't explain when asked. A dark cloud followed him, and even suited him; he might well have encouraged it. Troublesome, yet charming, exquisite in discourse and unbearable in everything else. They've been mistaken for each other before, Holmes and Moriarty; the pool of students fitting the general description of "skinny, black-haired, male, rude" being not especially small, but they're certainly stand-outs within it. 

Hooper knows him though, and she's the one who insists they go and talk to each other; just chat, she says, you'll have loads to chat about. Small talk is not something Sherlock does very well, but the poor girl is celebrating some piffling academic success and the least he can do is oblige her. Can't be any worse than talking to any of her other friends, most of whom are in attendance with the promise of liquor and snacks. (The first of them's already started making a break for it; she thinks no one will see her scooping up a cocktail napkin full of cashews and stuffing it in her coat pocket of she does so in the middle of chatting up the hostess' new boyfriend. He's too busy looking askance at Sherlock, wondering all sorts of things about the girl he's seeing.) 

John Watson's absence already chafes at him; if nothing else, his presence would give him the much-needed excuse to run out without looking like a total beast. Two stepping out looks better than one does. It's only by proximity with John that he even cares about how rude he looks on an occasion like this, elbowing instep-stamping John whispering sharp censures and texting him to quit hiding behind a laptop screen or in the men's room or behind the artificial Christmas tree, all but dragging him by the collar and he had been _thankful_ , the very fact that he hadn't rolled his short arse down the hill and thrown him in the river should have made that clear. 

Sherlock stands and brushes out his coat; Molly mediates between the two of them like a friendly but incontinent Irish setter. Holding out his hand, he feels like a bit of an ass; those gestures which serve to endear him to adults do nothing for him among students. 

"Hello, then. Sherlock Holmes -- I'm a friend of Molly's. Well, I say friend, but. You know." (She sags a little, like a deflated balloon or an unhappy puppet.)

The boy in the white shirt cocks his head like some sort of reptile, and smiles with teeth. His hand slips into Sherlock's and for a moment there, their grips lock, not quite a shake and too lingering to be a mere touch.

"Jim. Hi."

* * *

Jump ahead a bit, cut up and rearrange the timeline, twist things around to illustrate. The night he takes Jim into A&E is the night before exams. He's gotten himself safely into the zone of his intellect, trying gamely to stuff into the sprawling catacombs of his mind all the banal facts he should have been filing away all year. The material is stuff he theoretically finds engaging, but the last time he had to go over this and actually not know it had been in the Watsonian era, what feels like decades past. John had volunteered to help him study. Not that he knew the material either, but he was willing to put himself out there on the edge if it meant helping Sherlock out even if he did it with a sigh and a blistering cascade of profanities. 

He wonders if Ms. Mary Morstan ever needs help studying. If she ever sets the kitchen hob to billowing with clouds of acrid smoke because she decided to make Turkish coffee at 10 at night. He wonders what she's noticing about her new boyfriend.

His phone lights up, and he's relieved for the small distraction from self-pity and chemistry even as he's ready to rip the damned thing's battery out. (Maybe it's John. Of course it's not John.) Its sender catches his eye.

The text message reads, _guess where i am - jm_. And in immediate succession, as his alarm mounts accordingly --

  
_i've done something a bit naughty, find me - jm_. 

_you'll never guess - jm_

_quickly_  


He doesn't have time for this. He hurls his phone across the room in frustration, only to see it bounce hard and ricochet against the underside of the desk, jolting over the skull that had pride of place there surrounded by mugs and exsanguinated ballpoint pens.

The next text flickers into view later -- could be five, could be ten, could be fifteen minutes, a blip, unsigned.

_please_  


James Moriarty doesn't beg, even when he's wheedling him or appealing to some sense of civil courtesy they both know Sherlock doesn't have. His has atrophied and dropped off. But to read the word _please_ itself is like a needle through his heart, and it's all wrong. Sherlock comes running.

 

The phone sits in the empty basin of the sink, and Jim lies seizing, half under the shower-tap. His heartbeat rollicking along, no dignity in -- nothing, nothing, none. No blister-packs or guilty-looking plastic sachets to say what he's taken. There's little of the blood that Sherlock had feared, that had flooded his nightmarish vision of what awaited him, only what seeps through a split palm -- but one wet decayed pill still on Jim's bone-dry tongue, and a blue-black mark where he's been striking his head against the tile. No vomit, either, which isn't good. Nobody else's found him; nobody else would, not until--

_too late, too late, too late, too late_

 

He succeeds in sitting for his exams the next day, unwashed and distracted and fishbelly-pale with strain. He's stayed awake for longer, and for significantly less noble reasons. As soon as Jim's out of the hospital and out of observation he lets him have it -- not least of all for distracting him, but for making him afraid, for doing it at all, for giving him that kind of scare when he needs it least. Sherlock is ill-equipped to be anybody's lifeline, can't he see that? Absolutely anybody else in the world would be better at nursing his mentally defective replacement best friend through a OD, and his natural inclination is to be absolutely vicious.

But he doesn't blubber, and he doesn't tell on him. He endorses all claims to the effect that it was an innocent accident: perhaps not innocent, but not suicidal, or suicidally foolhardy. He explains to doctors in his most patient and Mycroftian tones that students are students, always have been. Nobody has to know that Jim's exams have already happened (he's passed) and that neither of them _needed_ to dose up on amphetamine to get their work done. Thank fuck it was -- on paper -- a prescribed medication ( _don't tell me, Jim, it's that narcolepsy giving you trouble, you bloody_ stupid _fuck--_ ) and thank fuck Sherlock has had to plan for just such contingencies as these since he was fourteen years old.

This is a test. Sherlock passes without ever knowing it.

 

To his credit, Jim takes these criticisms on the chin, and passes everything he himself faces with flying colors. His dark eyes are hangdog and guilty on his no-more-ravaged face; his apologies ring true, even to Sherlock's skeptical sensibilities, and this affords him the chance to play the hero to Jim's hapless lad-in-distress. He's sweetly obedient with his doctors and picks up adeptly on Sherlock's official story without having to be told twice, or told at all. Recovers quickly, and soon it's no more than an amusing aside in the annals of their beyond-defective relationship. The first abrupt low in the irregular pitch and swell of their acquaintance. The time will come when he'll think of _saving Jim_ as a positively fond memory.

If it had been John lying there, by some inexplicable happenstance, he'd have carried him through hell. He'd never have thought twice about doing whatever it took. Still in his mind's eye he can see Jim there, sick-limp like a discarded toy; he remembers how heavy his small body was, half-carried and half-dragged. He wonders if he'll ever think of him normally again, without the tang of panic and guilt and heart-pounding exhilaration to mar him. Just thinking of him gets his blood pounding now, how nice for both of them. It's a rotten way to forge a friendship, but marriages have started on less.


	2. Chapter 2

He's not John, and therein lies the appeal. He's not downright thick, like John is; he doesn't insist on locking him out so he can study in peace, he doesn't demand explanations for Sherlock's personal habits that don't even effect him, anyway. Arrogance is another difference, and it's there bubbling just under the surface, always, but Sherlock does not consider this in itself a flaw. 

The first-most advantage that sleeping with Jim offers over _not_ sleeping with John is that they're not taking any of the same courses. He can handle catching a glimpse of oatmeal-colored jumper or sandy hair somewhere around knee-height, if he's got Jim on the brain, but that's where he should stay, not confounding him with the obstacle of how slowly he must think in comparison to Sherlock, whose mind hurtles on like a runaway train, always. He can bear the occasional presence of the source of his torment, as long as his brain has something else to toy with. 

Transfer, it's called, in cases of addiction, and aged twenty-one Sherlock Holmes knows more than a little about the subject. Knows he's taking his chances now, that it will be harder than ever to keep up this balancing-act, but compared to his adolescent years he is having the time of his life. 

It's like stage magic. Carefully -- stealthily -- skillfully swap out the bitten apple for the rubber ball, the taxidermied dove for the live one, the yellow rhinestoned plastic for the heirloom earring and then _ta-da_ , it's the real one in your hand again, perhaps less glittering but more good. Swap the good for the bad, and switch them back again when it counts. The sleight of hand doesn't have to be easy, even when it's thuddingly simple, it just has to be subtle. So Sherlock goes about this business with the man he'd come to love and the man he'll come to fuck, as subtly as he can. 

John is twenty-one; he's bluff and honest and has a never-ending appetite for impossible tasks and endless labors. (Except, apparently, the labor that is keeping Sherlock upright and afloat.) He also has a girlfriend, and besides her they've moved to part company by mutual agreement. This had taken innumerable shouting matches, several housing changes and/or requests for same, and a direct intervention from dear brother himself to achieve. If Sherlock found his shortcomings so unbearably irritating, and John obviously had no special love for Sherlock's blundering in at 4 AM stinking of charcoal or staying up to equally ungodly hours working on his experiments, perhaps a temporary parting is what's best for them. It wounds Sherlock more than he can ever talk about. But he has to break away, or he'll die. He can't think clearly, he can't get any work done, he's pissing his time away and Mycroft is laughing at him.

If John's within his rights to demand some time off from the exhausting task of being Sherlock Holmes' boon companion, then Sherlock will find a worthy substitute. 

Jim is twenty, Jim is good-naturedly camp with a soaring Dublin 4 voice and a searing sense of humor and he knows where they've got all the best drugs. He's never missed an exam in his life, studies astrophysics, is left-handed with ambidextrous tendencies for anything involving a great deal of force exerted. He likes astrophysics because -- and this is not something Holmes has to ferret out of him, he says as much -- there's so much out there, and so little of it we'll ever touch. His other hobbies are more prosaic; he does business, and no prizes for guessing at what exactly his business entails. He seems to be reasonably good at it. At first there had been some question of which one it was, a case of _sells-things_ or _does-things_ , and the ultimate answer as unfolded over time, from a hundred little tells concealed away in his clothing and on his breath and in his bank account, is both.

He's many things that John is't -- clever, for a start. 

Sherlock's got to fill this hole in his heart -- this hole in his head -- with _something_ or he's going to leak blood and matter all over his scarves. Jim may not be John, but he can be trimmed down to fit into that gap passably well.

* * *

He makes the first cagey moves by haunting the library at ungodly hours, making sure to insinuate himself into his target's awareness in inoffensive manners and to bump into him from time to time among the stacks. To his surprise, Jim not only picks up on his clumsy attempts at artfulness, but responds with enthusiasm. He moves on to doing Jim a favor one night by showing him how to fiddle the locks on the door to the observatory dome, by the light of a smartphone flashlight. Looking back, it seems farcically simple, and he'd flattered himself by assuming Jim wouldn't already know how six different ways to break a door down, but Jim had seemed both impressed and grateful. He had expected a cursory thanks, or at least mild alarm, from the boy looking back at him once he'd got the door ajar; the cold air of the rarely-used facility is spilling out around them. Jim smiles in his face and pats him on the cheek, brushing past and being swallowed up into the darkness of the hallway. Their courtship starts there, with a chase.

* * *

The sex is the first thing, into which he flings himself with near-suicidal enthusiasm. Jim Moriarty is a fine conversationalist as regards those subjects in which they have a shared interest (viz., complaining about the tiresome habits of older siblings, bemoaning various social obligations putting a cramp in one's plans for the night and the inability to get a proper cup of tea) and Sherlock is conscious of the necessity of _some_ sort of social stimulation. Their companionship is forged by necessity, after all, though he flatters himself that Jim doesn't know to what degree. 

Neither of them enjoys being bored. Neither of them finds the current state of affairs at their little college particularly stimulating. The games begin this way, by tacit mutual agreement -- that anything, _anything_ would be better than being boring.

Sherlock will publish something under a pseudonym in one of the student publications, or any of the dozen academic journals he favors, or one he hates for a change; Jim will sniff out which one's his and publish a rebuttal, and back and forth they go. Jim will wander off for days at a time, and Sherlock will track him down and reel him back in. They both enjoy breaking and entering -- not _stealing_ as such, or at least not very often, that's like something out of one of Mycroft's short stories, J. W. Moriarty, Amateur Cracksman and his faithful pal Holmes. He leads Jim on his own merry chases -- bluffing their way into the nearest morgue, creeping about after dark, picking over the dissection specimens before the trainees can have a go at them. (John's angry texts the morning after make it all well worth it, and he doesn't mind the smell of formaldehyde, even when he's sucking it off of Jim's fingertips, and anyway that's not what they use any more) There's even some pretending to have drunk at least as much as the crowd he's running with has. They don't restrict themselves to school grounds, either; the boy seems to be always in cash, even as he can hardly seem to pay his bills when they come due, and in the backs of cabs they play the game of who can be most indecently friendly, or Jim will stroke him off through his clothes while compelling him to give an account of what he sees of the passersby and of what he can glean about their cabbie's character from the car's interior. It's a damn sight more fun than Mycroft snapping at him like a schoolmaster to tell him what he sees. 

Much of it entails tramping through clubs; they're like overgrown Petri dishes swarming with -- stimuli, with noises and smells and more data than he knows what to do with. Jim grabs him by the arm and drags him through it all; he knows every hole-in-the-wall and players' club within Jim's operating radius by the color of its wristbands or the blacklight ink of its stamps as it rubs off on sweating law students' shirt cuffs. Never once does he see Jim make a sale, though he shares words and drinks with others who have, Sherlock knows what that looks like and it's all at arm's length. Perhaps he does when Sherlock's not looking, but he always is. 

The sex is another dimension of the game, if they do it right. 

His body has a presence, even his voice, that makes everything he does come across just slightly laced with lewdness, and in his eagerness to put his own distractions behind him Sherlock has found this both beneficial and infuriating. The fact that he's a man, a rather _camp_ man (though he's more than happy to kiss the girls and make them cry) is not a factor; he doesn't make a grand protest of his heterosexuality and that's enough. 

The first time is in the conservatory, spread out on Sherlock's wooly coat. They're hiding out in the corner where potting-soil is kept, between the leaky tap and the damp cardboard press used to make compostable pots in some past decade, but their bodies are thrumming with the night's energy from clambering up onto rooftops and scaling decorative brick walls. They run like ghosts are chasing them, and when they stop--

It's as if they've fallen together. His shameless face is half in shadow; he lifts his chin, Adam's apple sharp in his throat. Hard, sharp, shameless, cold; Sherlock traces with one finger the cold expanse of his flat belly where his shirt's hitched up in front.

Jim cups his face in his hands, draws them down over the strange planes of Sherlock's face (and he knows it _is_ strange, alien and equine and all sorts of other things) like he has the intention never to forget them. He kisses him so sweetly that Sherlock can forget about the mechanics of the kiss; he can surrender himself to being eaten up this way, having his soul sucked away in nicotine kisses, and Jim's voice so low and soft in his ear falters into something just a little wilder. 

"Now you're mine." 

Sherlock twists under him, ungainly long legs twining around him; his hands rather belatedly find Jim's arse, as he grinds up close against his thigh and fumbles out his belt from its loops. His stiffness and awkwardness help him here, with no venue for one of his occasional bursts of bizarre grace, and Jim is precise enough that he can afford to be forgiving. 

His belt fits snugly under Sherlock's jaw, he pulls it back only lightly with the creaking of leather and Sherlock is already gasping, eyes stinging. Soon he can't gasp at all, and has lost the power of speech; his jaw tightens and he can feel his lungs following suit all too quickly. His chest convulses, and Moriarty hitches his hips against the way he stiffens. 

Jim's voice is soft against his exposed ear, and it sends Sherlock twisting back another few degrees.

"It would be so very easy," he says, "just to _squeeze_ you til your eyes popped. Stuff you back in your trousers, hang you up from the ceiling beams, make it look like an _accident_. Something _sordid_. Easy peasy. I could do it with one hand." 

His other hand is circling his cock, tight in place and exquisitely painful. Desire makes him insensate; vision warps, everything seen through the obscuring fringe of delirious eyelashes. His pulse begins to throb in his ears. 

Jim lets the belt slacken and the relief is immediate; his grip slackens as well just for a moment and Sherlock comes so hard he sees stars. 

 

Jim lights a cigarette and presses it to his own mouth first, for a sharp thick first gasp of smoke, and then to Sherlock's lips. His nose has begun to bleed; it drips on the rolling-paper. They stumble back to Jim's rooms like a pair of drunken men and there they sleep together, really sleep, on the dingy couch too narrow for both of them; when Sherlock wakes again the sky is already bruising dark. 

 

  
_thinking of you. jm_

_hope you're thinking of me. jm_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **J.M. Moriarty and his faithful pal Holmes** : Yep, this is a Raffles ref. I have no idea what Arthur Conan Doyle's brother-in-law's work looks like in the BBC!Sherlock universe, or what ACD was known for if not the Holmes stories, but it was undoubtedly just as gay.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a bit brief! (Additional warnings on this chapter for slurs and self-destructive behavior.)

The constant crises are what make it interesting. Never a dull moment between the two of them. The drugs and sex don't mix, generally, they don't have to; Jim says he feels boring, if Sherlock has to be blitzed to put up with his advances, and Sherlock _is_ truly bored if he has to initiate touch. Sherlock only likes being touched in certain ways and at certain times, and Jim has sex the way other people smoke -- when they're nervous, when they're bored, when they need to waste time. Several times in succession. Often in alleyways. Fidelity is not the problem; Sherlock doesn't know what he'd do with somebody else's faith if he had it. But it's not -- safe. 

The night is over by the time some peroxide-blond knob is aiming to leave bootprints on his boyfriend's kidneys on the street outside for getting up under his girlfriend's frilly skirt. Second tonight, second willing wench and second veiny boyfriend gone scarlet with fury at poor inoffensive milky poof _Jim_. He's laughing, all the while, that's how Sherlock spots him -- laughing and taunting in between the badly-dodged blows. Those musclebound _friends_ of Jim's whom they've come here to meet are intervening only listlessly, as if they'd much rather be joining in. Sherlock weaves between the three of them and scoops him up, very nearly bodily. 

Jim is screaming, spitting, threatening, all the way to the cab. Sherlock claps a hand over his mouth only for him to bite down on the fleshy sides of his ring finger. He's all prepared to have to nerve-pinch him into unconsciousness just to lug him into the vehicle but Jim just goes still, long enough to play dead-drunk.Without an audience he goes limp, go fucking figure. 

He smells like gummy dance-floor tile and hairspray; there's sweat marking his shirt collar and a semen stain on the lapel of that expensive suit jacket he favors. Somebody's dabbed at it with a damp cocktail napkin, but they haven't done a very good job. 

Jim sinks down to rest his head on Sherlock's lap in the back of the cab. 

"I certainly hope you're happy." 

" _Thought_ we'd best be going!" 

"If you needed my help, you might've just said."

"Oh, shut up." He sticks his tongue out, stained orange with blood and food-coloring.

"Is this fun for you? Seeing how many different warehouses you can lose teeth outside? How many slags you can pile up in one night? For a self-styled genius you can be," he says, self-conscious of the irony and trying the word on for size (one of Jim's, and John's when quite irate) "quite the _cunt_." 

Jim tries to sit up, and can't. There'll be lovely bruises all up and down him in the morning.

"You know, Sherlock," he begins after some pause, having recovered his breath and poised to deliver a platitude, "It doesn't _matter_ how many others there are. They come and they go, they leave, and you don't. You're my anchor, Sherlock, all I need is one -- just one fixed point, and I can move mountains."

"There's usually something about a lever in there, isn't there?" But Sherlock is smiling tightly now, rubbing his stinging fingers through Jim's sweat-damp hair. 

"Fucking public school boys. It's a metaphor, I just improved on it, that's all. Christ, I think my phone's smashed... oh dear." 

He fades off into gentle crying, beginning to shake against his shirt-front, or else he's doing a very good counterfeit of it. Sherlock forgives him and takes him back to his room, to eat two of the energy bars Mycroft is under the impression Sherlock will eat if he leaves enough of them around, and to talk about math until he gives up on the Amazing Invulnerable Club Kid and passes out.

* * *

This street doesn't run both ways. He expects to know who's on Sherlock's phone, and when, and what they had to say. He knows his schedule better than he does; how better to plan the game? To slink in after classes and cut him out of a crowd of his fellow students like a wolf idly deigning to befriend a lamb. Sometimes Sherlock will go out of his way to avoid him or evade him, and face unresponsive sullenness for a day or two, but for the most part, it's not hard to wall him off when he's already done an excellent job all by himself.

* * *

_when i think about you i hurt myself. love and kisses, jm_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I swear to God I did not intend for this to turn into unremitting Jim!whump; Sherlock's going to get tired of being the most functional one here pretty quick and Jim is going to take it badly. Also, John and Mary incoming.)


	4. Chapter 4

He can't remember the last time he made it through a pathology lecture with a clear head, without thinking at least once (fondly or furiously) of this cancer that's eating him. His tics multiply, his already-short temper gets even shorter. However it may look from the outside, he's running hot, and he's not in misery -- he's having the time of his young life. Sherlock's never felt young, saddled with an absurd name and altogether age-inappropriate sensibilities regarding just about everything.

* * *

"You never talk about Sherlock any more. It used to be you never talked about anything else. I don't mind the two of you spending time together, you know. It's good for you to have someone else, you shouldn't be _completely_ at the mercy of us medical types."

"Why should I talk about him? He's a complete arse-- listen, if you'd known him the first two years--" 

Mary furrows her brow. Her hand lingers on John's knee, as gently as she can manage.

"John? Can I be rude for a sec?"

"Mm?"

"He didn't -- make a pass at you, or anything like that?"

"No -- god, no. I mean, I wouldn't -- no. It was nothing like that, he just wasn't leaving me alone. I never had time to breathe." 

"I've seen how he used to look at you. When I was still trying to get up the nerve to ask you out to the bar I used to be _terrified of him--_ "

"He has that effect on people."

"--terrified he was going to swoop down on me and dash me against a rock for getting between him and his hetero lifemate. I'll wager he's got a bit of a crush. It's nothing to be embarrassed about, it's not like he'd do it to spite you..."

She waves her hands aimlessly. John's begin to go rather red. 

"I don't want to talk about this. Let's just put a film on or something--"

* * *

"What happened to his other friends?" 

"I don't think he _has_ any other friends. In case you haven't noticed, he's an unrepentant wanker." 

"There's that kid with the laugh..."

* * *

_bored. also horny. pick one and fix it. jm_

Jim twists beneath him, a low moan transforming into a ripple of raw laughter. Sherlock palms against his chest. Learning, adapting.

"What a good boy you are. What a good boy I am." 

When they're done, lying back spent, Jim asks with wondering brightness (as if it's just occurred to him) if he'd been the one to take his cherry.

**

As time passes and their intimacy deepens, Sherlock has the liberty of casting back his thoughts and recalling their first meetings -- gracefully restrained meetings and partings, like dancers, like two pendulums on their strings striking and flying apart and coming together again. He's capable of recalling what wasn't right, what didn't fit, even then. All the parts are there, but he can't put them together when they're constantly in flux. When new data is constantly being hurled at him.

The texts are a mimic, a mirror. The first ones weren't signed; the later ones, after he's been corresponding with Sherlock for a few, are. And he's had ocular proof of Jim Moriarty knowing his way 'round more complicated locks at least two dozen times since their first meeting at the observatory. Why play along? Why play at all? He's committed his own share of abominable behavior, from neglect of his obligations to failing to fill in Jim on some critical bit of info ( _brother dear's coming to visit - clear out - SH_ ) until the last minute. But it's been so long since he's been around anyone who didn't consider his baseline state of being something beastly and unbearable that if there's anything truly unacceptable in Jim's daring he can't clearly identify it.

* * *

His hands are down his pants in the third-floor washroom of the student affairs building. There's a party going on downstairs, with all the attendant thudding noises and dance music, loud enough to cover any untoward sounds as well as all but the heaviest footsteps in the hallway. Jim likes the urgency this brings, and Sherlock is beginning to unfold and reciprocate, as something in him comes unwound.

Trousers down, bend over, very good. The music thrums through the tile. 

His warm wiry body is working against him and Sherlock's brain strips all that stimulus down to the elements of physics, forces exerted and pressure and then waves of pain-pleasure that unwind themselves in the core of him, for which he can make no scientific account. Jim knows how to make his body work, and he can do it without Sherlock having to _try_ , having to undertake the dreaded work of initiating or setting the pace, because no matter who's doing what, Jim always initiates in one way or another and Jim always sets how it's going to go. 

He's taking his precious time tearing through the foil wrapper of a condom, he can hear the plastic crinkling even as Jim's erection is brushing against him, and he's lurchingly heart-poundingly conscious of every little press and touch and raw edge scraping. His impatience bursts forth and tumbles out of him as a laugh, blurting "for God's sake, John, go without, I don't give a damn--" 

He's never been good at moderating what comes out of his mouth. 

"If you say so, pet." Jim is indulgent and his voice is very, very soft. A needy little caress marks his hip, and he braces for the blow that often follows the fond touch, an electric jolt of anticipation underlining the unavoidable, that he _likes it_. But Jim doesn't bother, drumming out schoolboy Morse with a fingertip. 

__

S H - J M - S H.

What follows is quite nice, until a point.

"Jim," he says when they've finished, with a grateful lowering of his gaze, when he comes up again drowsily from wherever it is he goes when they make love. He's half-expecting to be slathered with another prickly kiss. Instead the face he sees is a waxen mask, void of expression. 

His spare black eyebrows shoot up. The rest of the face seems to follow what it should be doing from this cue. "Oh, I'm Jim again, am I? " 

Before the word _what_ can leave his lips, Jim head-butts him in the face, twice; the second strike breaks his nose. Sherlock's drug-drowsy and sufficiently fatigued that he doesn't see it coming, he falls back on the porcelain tiling with a cracking sound that rattles in his ears and tries to staunch the gush with his fingers, can't. 

Jim washes his hands at the sink basin and leaves him there.

* * *

  
_i'm sorry christ i'm sorry please believe me - jm_

_want me to come and fix it - jm_

_i'm sorry i love you i'm sorry_   


* * *

"Someone's given your mate Sherlock quite the shiner," Mary says at dinner. She's not very discreet in checking him out, if so; the startlement shows in her face. 

"It wasn't me, if that's what you're asking." John doesn't turn to look at first; her tone is characteristically wry. (And if he turns to look at Sherlock, who knows what will surge up in him, harder than he can keep it down.) 

"He hasn't taken up boxing, I imagine--" 

"I didn't think he got out that much." 

Only liars give too many details. When asked about the origin of his new and exciting injuries, Sherlock Holmes answers, "a fight".

* * *

Jim changes his schedule and joins him in his Geological Sciences course. When the instructor's not looking, he waves.


	5. Chapter 5

By way of apology, Jim brings him an assortment of classical-music tapes for his amusingly out-of-step collection and starts him back on the needle. The prep is still so familiar he could do it with his eyes closed, but the boy is making a big show out of obedience, obsequiousness, cautiousness. (Though he never once assumes he's not wanted there.)

When he looks down at his own forearm and thinks _christ, I'm getting thin,_ he knows he's going too far. They make perverse small talk amongst themselves, as Jim perches at the edge of the desk and plots dosages. 

"Where'd they shuttle you off to, anyway? When you were small."

"Harrow." In some perverse act of family loyalty.

"And when did you start?" 

"Some time in year ten. Not the proper stuff right off the bat; I wouldn't have known where to get it. I was a right little chemistry whiz, otherwise, I just took a while to find my niche." 

Jim winces in stagey sympathy.

"What did they _do_ to you, Mr. Holmes?" 

"What they'd do to anyone who expressed the slightest scrap of superficial difference. I was profoundly different. Use your imagination, for Christ's sake." 

"Now it's not going to be like it was, so we'll go easy, all right?" He rolls up his sleeve with gentle hands, and for a moment he bends so low that Sherlock thinks he's going to kiss the crook of his arm. There's some irony in tying off with a silk necktie. One of Jim's, not exactly the old school tie, printed with a scattering of jolly little skulls. Death's heads. 

"Difference is... now you've got me." 

Slipping away into the tranquil waters of a morphine high, Sherlock can almost forgive him. In a pinch, he makes a decent doctor.

* * *

Mary Morstan finds time between studying like the damned and volunteering with student health services to apply some basic observation skills and diagnose that her boyfriend is having a hard time of it. He's a walking shambles, always drained and blearily checking his phone. Looking around, face falling, sighing. It's nothing to do with Harry -- she seems to be doing all right, or at least doing as well as usual -- and it's not to do with coursework. John is waiting for something, looking for something, and it's not coming along. Her mother would describe it as "fretful" but it's worse than that. It's killing her to see him like this. 

"You're worried about him."

"I'm sorry, who?" 

"Sherlock. Sherlock Holmes. The boy you spent a year and a half surgically attached to at the hip and now are avoiding like he doesn't exist."

"Wouldn't you avoid him, if you could? Not this again, Mary, please, _butt out--_ " 

"It doesn't take fucking Hercule Poirot to work out he's on drugs."

"Report it to the administration, then. Phone his brother." 

"Have you fucking looked at him? Don't you care even the least bit?"

* * *

Mary Morstan has cut her hair into neat little wisps like a Roman patrician, very short and very blonde. She looks like John's twin. Sherlock looks at her with profound suspicion, though circumstances force him to squint. 

"You look like hell." 

"Charming. Lovely to meet you too." 

"How's things? How goes your participation in the universal effort to skive by on as little work as possible?"

"Fuck off. I'm doing fine. Better than you are, probably." 

Not exactly Oscar Wilde, is he? She's staring at him. He is being assessed. For a disaffected intellectual who made a great show out of not giving a damn, he knows how to dress to set off his best features -- grey-alien cheekbones, dark floppy Paul McGann curls and piercingly intelligent eyes. Someone's blacked both of them; they stare out sullenly, hemmed in by swollen pads of trapped blood. Split skin on the bridge of his nose. Perhaps he's been in a car accident, mashed his face on the steering column. Un-fucking-likely. Maybe he'd pissed off his dealer and gotten nutted for his trouble. 

"All right, then. I won't keep you." 

As he turns to sweep off in his greatcoat -- with all the grace of a jilted puppet that's sulking -- she calls after him.

"John still has a bunch of your books, you know. If you want them back, come by whenever you like."

"I won't, thanks," he says with the dry lilt of someone who's mastered tone but not content.


	6. Chapter 6

"Molly, what can you tell me about Jim Moriarty?"

Molly Hooper immediately begins to blush as pink as her pyjamas. 

"What's the matter, has he done something?"

"No, no, I just thought -- we're doing a year-end project together. The two of you seem to have gotten along, but I wanted to know if there was anything I ought to know in advance."

"Oh, yes, yes. That'll be nice, the two of you..." 

"Why would you ask if he's _done_ something?"

"I just mean -- people talk, and you don't drop in that often. You might have phoned first." She adjusts her position, cross-legged on the narrow bed, so Mary can settle in with tea. She hadn't expected her not to be out of bed yet, but medical students have a perverse love of binge-drinking and minor accidents, and everything about her demeanor and her carefully crafted dimly-lit nest suggests a _massive_ hangover. It's a wonder she's admitting guests at all.

Molly bites her lip.

"Start anywhere, really," Mary says, trying to gently prompt without being coaxing.

"Er, well, he's smallish, he likes astronomy, he's funny..."

"Anything I should be worried about? Late assignments? Crap handwriting? Bad temper?"

"We dated for three months, and he broke up with me on my birthday." Wince. Molly fumbles at a foil card of painkillers and takes a swig of orange juice. "I bought him a telescope, did you know that? Our two-month anniversary. He said he really liked it."

It takes Mary a moment to run through her internal database on what the appropriate response to this is. It's almost funny, in a bitter kind of way, and the quirk of Molly's lovely red mouth makes it clear that she knows it is and hates it. 

"God, I'm sorry, what a bastard thing to do--" 

"It shows I can pick 'em, doesn't it. I feel like we should all be taking bets on when Tom turns out to have a mini-fridge full of skulls or something, when _that_ shoe drops -- Seb's a serial cheater, and on _top_ of the bastardness Sherlock and _Jim_ 're, you know." Her eyebrows go up, a self-deprecating reverse grimace. 

"They're what?"

"Gay," Molly says, peevishly. " _Com_ plete, flag-waving gay. In NatSci they're taking bets on when they own up, but they're shagging like rabbits. I thought everybody knew."

Mary pats her rather gingerly on the knee. "It's not your fault. People are still just figuring themselves out in college; you couldn't have known about all that."

Molly abruptly goes pale. "You don't think -- that's why somebody beat him up, is it? Like a gaybashing. He won't talk about it 'cause this school's so small, he doesn't want to be targeted again. I mean, it's possible--"

"That's what _I'm > trying to figure out."_

"Do what you've got to do, all right?"

* * *

Sherlock doesn't have any sort of social media presence under his own name; there's mutterings about a blog, but he'd deleted everything in namespace, according to John, in a fit of pique after he hadn't taken kindly to the constant running commentary on his personal habits and/or posting frequency. Jim has a Twitter, periodically updated with cheeky but inoffensive comments and math jokes. Other sites turn up more or less the same info -- he's from Sussex most recently, and his security settings are rather higher than Mary's used to, though they would be, she imagines, if he's gay and trying to make a fresh start for himself at college. He seems charming. Capable of being rather sweet, only nasty in ways that people are willing to tolerate as being absent-minded, or that they're likely to embrace because they're witty. It's beyond her abilities to assess from a few scant Internet postings and a few photographs whether he's the kind of boyfriend who'd get into a knock-down drag-out row with Sherlock Holmes over... well, it would be anything, from Sherlock's querulous disposition, wouldn't it. 

She catches sight of him -- of Jim -- on the way back from dinner, and makes a beeline out of her way to give him a closer look on the way by. This man, her suspect, is hardly living his life under a black cloud. Clean, trendy, laughing, checking his phone -- unbruised. 

If things had gotten physical, wouldn't Sherlock have given as good as he'd gotten? Partners don't _brawl_ with one another. Or at least they shouldn't.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Small additional warning this chapter for mentions of de facto institutionalization/confinement at home.)

The summer goes too quickly, for what it is; Jim doesn't go back to Brighton. He'd sort of assumed that Jim's family had to be more or less rotten, but when he invites him to spend the summer with the Holmes family he doesn't hesitate for a moment before he accepts. ("They don't see much of me these days. I drop in to say hello, make sure nobody's dead...") Sherlock wasn't certain which he'd put first, business or pleasure, but in the end he chooses Sherlock, chooses to spend that interval safe and certain with the only person who knows how to handle him. Who knows him at all, really, from student drama clubs to the student union he's insipid as water, colorless, chameleon. 

Mother and Father are only too pleased to know their son has playmates, and Mycroft's not around to darkly intimate things about the relationship between the two of them -- he _must_ know if he squeals on his brother, his brother will squeal on him.

He's pleased enough to serve two masters if he's got decent company with him; Jim is a worthy sidekick and those months are an oasis, no flare-ups and no trouble and for once, enough of everything. Enough privacy, enough solace, enough secret conversation and grand adventure and strange intimacy. Tumbling down off walls attempting rudimentary freerunning and scraping up their palms, going boating and swapping prickly kisses underneath the dappled shade  of the swaying trees, quail's eggs and champagne-soured breath ( _and don't pretend you've had anything like it, because you fucking haven't, you silly sod_ ) Nicotine-scented fingers on his face, cursing at malfunctioning electronics, impromptu concerts, stumbling to their Tube stations. Late-night laundry to soak out the smell of squatters' nests. New hazards. New mysteries. It's enough. 

Is this what he wants? Was it what he wanted all along? A diversion, a toy. A comrade? 

Jim leans over to him at breakfast, and puts his hand on the back of Sherlock's right arm -- a subtle touch, a thin breath of secretive intimacy.

"You're thinking about _him_ , aren't you." He swallows; there's a catch in his voice, just the smallest halting, a quaver. "I can see it in your face. Don't."

Then he goes right back to slicing up his toast into soggy slips and chatting away like a bird.

* * *

"I don't need a minder."

"But you _do_ need to graduate, which at this rate you most certainly will not do if left to your own devices. I should have kept you on a leash. Mother was right, they should have kept you at home, fixed up the spare room--"

"And set up an appointment for the lobotomy, yes. You have no fucking idea what I did to get in here, how hard I worked--"

"And now you've thrown it all away to play silly buggers with your new friend." Fancy fucking _Mycroft_ to put that kind of sneer in his voice at those words, like he isn't the silliest of all possible buggers for having himself so totally deluded that he's doing something serious and that he's not destined to die a lonely old queen in a civil service position. "You're ruining your health. Your grades have gone to _shit_. Don't ever think for a second I don't intend to _do something about that_."

"I'd like to see you fucking try."

* * *

They lie together on the grass, beneath Mother's favorite ugly tree that has been dropping its sticky seeds everywhere since the days of Sherlock's youth. (He'd broken his arm falling out of it once; now, looking up at it with a boy close by him, he feels the same kind of astonished concussed awe. They have passed beyond speech; each of them knows what the other is thinking. It's something sublime, being so close.) 

Jim's pulling up little sprigs of grass with his fingers; Sherlock's arm is resting beside him, slowly going all pins and needles. (Ha.) 

"You know, I said what I liked about space was its _bigness_ , but really... looking around up there, we get to see how everything dies. And everything _will_ die. Pass away, come to an end, armor clattering in the dust... gives you perspective, doesn't it. You have to make your own fun." 

Their fingers lace together. Sherlock is too frightened to let go.


	8. Chapter 8

**

Jim Moriarty starts the term off with a bang.

His phone rings; he doesn't need to look. _"Sherlock? Sherlock, listen, I haven't much time, I need you to come get--"_ Three electronic blips, and he's cut off. 

The next message comes from an unknown number. It's a photograph taken with a  mobile-phone camera, poorly-lit and cloudy with pixellated artifacts; it shows a man stripped to the waist, caught in the moment of locking a door. Industry-standard lock; hotel, not domestic, unless it's an aesthetic choice and a recent addition as well. Think quickly. Look. Observe. His face isn't visible, but there's the glint of the temple-piece of a pair of glasses, dark hair threaded with bolt-grey, and from the musculature of his torso he must be at least forty-five, from the pitted scars on his back he must be--

It's another game; it's transparent. Sherlock doesn't know what it is, and Jim's testing him, trying him.

He's not jealous. Sherlock Holmes doesn't know what jealousy _feels_ like, for normal people. He's afraid for him.

**

The boy's white with mortification; he looks hideously exposed under the halogen station-house lighting, in a too-fitted shirt and low-slung trousers. There's a bit of bloody gauze taped to his cheek. Sherlock wants to crumble at the sight of those skinny white arms and wrap him in his coat nearly as much as he wants to rip his head off. Other people's stupidity has never failed to astonish him, but this is _Jim_ \-- Jim who should know better, Jim who should have at the very least some sense of timing. Article the first: nothing can be proven. Article the second: he's safe. Article the third: Sherlock is very, very unhappy with him.

Sherlock's voice is tight from trying not to shout. "I was under the impression you were in over your head."

"So you sent the po _lice_!" Jim's voice rapidly becomes a scream. "I said come fucking find me, not _please, Sherlock, nothing I'd like half so much as getting thrown in the slammer--_ "

"For fuck's sake, Jim--" He lashes out blindly and strikes the wall with the back-side of a balled-up fist. Jim flinches. "I thought you were dead, for Christ's sake, I was this close--"

To having them canvas the river for corpses, to phone round the local morgues, for kicking down the door of every one of the cheap hotel rooms he'd identified as possible places for his boyfriend to crash and yanking back shower curtains looking for his strangled corpse. How many sex workers go missing every year? How many of them are ever found? 

"Well, then, marvelous. Justice is served," Jim says, mild as milk. "I can't speak for myself, but you certainly gave the other guy a good scare." 

Jim cocks his head, rubbing at his stiff neck. Sherlock strains to see if he's got marks there, scratches or bites, ligature marks. There's some chafing, and his lips are distinctly swollen -- it's impossible not to picture it, him on his knees sucking some stranger's cock, the thought so unbearable Sherlock's made to choke by it. One of his obnoxious little aphorisms is rattling around in his brain -- if you're _good_ at something, you never do it for free. 

There it is, it's all there. All the signs. 

"Don't be a _prude_. We didn't even fuck. He'd barely got his cock out before I told him it looked just like my dad's. He was very conscientious and wanted to hold me whilst I wept, but I made my escape. Stole his ID badge."

He pulls it out of his pocket on the end of its extendable cord, and tugs on it jauntily like the Artful Dodger displaying a stolen pocket-watch. He grins for Sherlock's approval, purple-shadowed eyes crinkling up. His eyelashes are dark with tears. 

It's a farce.

Sherlock surrenders, leaning back and taking one long tight breath, letting it out sharply. Jim looks so young, and Sherlock doesn't know when he started feeling old and decrepit, but every part of him aches, including that atrophied lump of muscle anatomists might call a heart. 

He can't look him in the eye again."You are _appalling_ ," Sherlock says. It's not the last word, it's a surrender. 

"And how you love it, darling. You're just like me. They've scooped you out inside, all you've got left is a brain."


	9. Chapter 9

>   
> **From:** "Mary Morstan"; mm800@stlukes.cam.ac.uk  
>  **To:** scienceofdeductionblog@gmail.com  
>  Subject: (untitled)  
> Date: xx/xx/xxxx
> 
> Hi,  
>  Is this the right email? I feel like we've got off on the wrong foot. If you'd prefer to talk more privately I understand perfectly. Are you feeling alright? Greg wanted me to drop you a line, they're missing you in Bio. I can email you your assignments if you need them. 
> 
> Best,  
>  Mary Morstan

*

>   
> **From:** scienceofdeductionblog@gmail.com  
>  **To:** mm800@stlukes.cam.ac.uk  
>  Subject: re: (untitled)  
>  Date: xx/xx/xxxx
> 
> Don't try to contact me again.  
>  -SH

It's in Lestrade's interest as much as Sherlock's own to avoid a scandal -- if he _is_ using drugs again, and if his studies are suffering, that can be dealt with before it becomes a matter of public knowledge. As his tutor, some of the blame would fall squarely on Lestrade's shoulders, among other things -- managing the brilliant and unruly is ostensibly what he's there for..

**

Sherlock Holmes is rude, abrasive, _mental_ , he sees things that nobody should ever see and says things that nobody should ever say. He can't manage to keep a job, keep out of trouble, keep his boyfriend from chasing after seedy hazards just to keep from perishing of boredom. He isn't equipped to handle anything; how would he know how to maintain a relationship? But John would know what to do. He knew how to keep up under strain, just not under the strain of being Sherlock's one lifeline.

If John had wanted to renew their old acquaintance, he'd have gone and said so more emphatically -- he'd have called him, he'd have texted, he'd have given some sort of indication that Sherlock hadn't just dropped off the surface of the earth. These things are conspicuously absent. The separation must be working for him -- it must be a blessed relief. Peace. Peace without Sherlock, and gradually, forgetting about him. Some degree of forgetfulness is healthy, like scar tissue forming over an old bite wound or a cigarette burn, even enviable. 

This is what he tells himself. John's simply forgotten, he's doing well for himself safely suffocated under coursework. He seldom thinks of him because he's got his hands full with a girlfriend, studying to save lives. Sherlock can't even save himself.

**

It beggars belief, but it's one of the good times, when _he's_ had _Jim_ instead of vice versa; they're shipwrecked on one another, too tipsy-sated to shift out of the sweat-damp spots on the sheets or to tug off the condom and chuck it in the trash.

Jim's an angel, lost and gentle and soft under his hands.

"We could rent a boat, take it out some awful night and get ourselves washed overboard. Ransack your rooms and make it look like something dreadful happened -- need a little blood to really sell it, though. We'll set the scene, and watch them scramble to figure it out."

"Has anyone ever told you you're a proper psychopath?"

"Think about it, Sherlock. Wouldn't have to deal with Mycroft any more, would you? No disappointment from mummy and daddy, no more trouble about earning a degree.. And really, who'd be surprised?"

"How will I know you're not going to off me for real?"

"You've always been good at spotting when I'm faking." (Without further adieu, Jim starts fluttering and groaning against his earlobe in the throes of a fairly realistic orgasm. Realistic enough that it starts to make Sherlock rather cross.)

"Oh, shut up."

"Not dead, then. Missing. Kidnapped. Ransomed. I could make a pretty penny off you, you know, I've seen your parents' house. Not that I need to." He kisses him, a soft little tugging kiss that makes Sherlock ache to turn his head.  "My mad, brave bastard."

A year ago, Sherlock would have quirked an eyebrow and drawled that he was hardly the mad one in comparison. Now he doesn't know.

 

They make love a second time in the shower, a second bout like an apology for all the times before they've been careless with one another, just sweet tired bodies. Afterward he shoots up and Jim watches, dark eyes like a dissectionist's.

Sherlock recognizes that rapt curiosity from his own experiments; it's like looking in a mirror. He feels like an insect under a pin.


	10. Chapter 10

He runs into John in the student-run bar, or John runs into him -- Sherlock has trailed there after Jim limply while he picks up some cash from a good good friend or works on his campus network in some way not entirely above-board. Afterward, they're going to see a film. This has been promised, and it seems like a good compromise; it is, Sherlock thinks, a normal thing to do. (Jim knows everyone, naturally; he used to let Sherlock be when he wasn't in need of him, but waiting in his rooms for Jim to return is more boring than running errands with him, which at least throws the occasional obstacle in their way. Such as this one, yes.) Something bumps into the chair opposite him, and suddenly, as if John Watson had never left -- he's there again. ( _Right where he should be,_ a small sentimental voice chimes in. _Right where you need him._ Small sentimental voices never helped anybody.) 

Seeing his friend now, he could weep. He could just as easily punch him in the nose. Bless him, John hasn't changed at all -- he's gotten more serious, more dull, or he's gained some weight perhaps and grown more substantial, but he has simply become more fully and comfortably himself. Sherlock has wasted away to a wire armature of a person, all folded in on himself. A puppet, dancing on a string. 

John uncrosses his arms. He still wears the same oatmeal-colored jumpers, but this one has been borrowed, and shows a few distinctly non-John-like areas of wear. Best case scenario, it's Harry. Worst case, it's his lovely assistant. His beer begins to sweat onto the tabletop, and his battered mobile phone is turned over to face the wet-ringed varnish. 

He begins with brightness, warmness. "Fancy seeing you here! I never thought you were a big drinker -- how've you been, Sherlock?"

"Ghastly. I'm surrounded by ignoramuses." He feels his face twitch into something that might be a smile, and sharpens it into something placidly confident. "Cooking up all sorts of good things. How goes the study of medicine?" 

"Oh, you know. Good. Really good. Listen, mate. Come down and visit us sometime, I wasn't going for permanent exile--" 

But this isn't John inviting him over for a marathon of those never-ending Bond movies or a beer and a rousing argument -- he has the same look of dull inquiry on his face and the same mounting pressure in his voice as a doctor asking you to keep them posted on emergent side-effects as you're already waltzing out the door. Very good, John, very professional. 

He doesn't have to turn around to realize that Jim's done doing business and he's about joined them; the vibration trill in his coat pocket and the prickle on the back of his neck, like a dog responding to a whistle. (Maybe it's something John hears too, and thus the pressure, but what does it matter -- Sherlock's head turns, Sherlock's head will always turn. Jim likes him to look.) 

He's in the company of the most splendidly attractive girl he's ever seen -- no, a woman, like a Biblical queen. Sherlock doesn't know where to look on her to assess first -- at her face, at her hands, at the hem of her coat or the terrifying angles of her body beneath her clothes. This effect must have been carefully cultivated. The woman wears a lace dress that hangs on her like a glove and dagger-sharp heels. Her mouth is the scarlet of fresh lacquer, and looks about as hazardous to the touch; his skin itches just looking at her, and when she lifts her head to glance his way he feels an electric pang. Between the two of them they are all long legs and all cruel eyes. 

Jim kisses her cheek like an indulgent family friend, and calls out Sherlock's name, with a little wave of a white-fingered hand. 

"Is this your friend?" John says, still po-faced and staring over his shoulder with unconcealed skepticism at what he sees. Sherlock's heart does something very stupid, and it flutters a little.

"Yes," he says. 

Sherlock gets up from his seat, feeling the worn-down soles of his shoes slip for an awful lurchy moment against the metal bar. Jim is here, and he's all right -- he's looking well, even, and the shout of greeting leaves his own mouth before his brain can limp after. He's here, he's fine. Jim leaves the woman behind and bounces up on the balls of his feet to clap Sherlock on the back. Words are exchanged, words without much meaning.; John calls out a greeting too, aimed at all three of them a beat behind, and Sherlock swivels to look back at him with Jim's fingertips hard on his shoulder, a stupidly affable smile carving open his mouth. 

"Have the two of you met? Jim, who's this?" The woman smiles steelily and says nothing. 

John's eyes are on them both, dark and keen. Jim reaches up and kisses Sherlock on the mouth firm enough to nearly topple him. It's a companionably raunchy kiss, nothing you'd get kicked off the Tube for, and he gets a mouthful of crackling short circuits, a taste of familiar ruination. 

"She's cleaning this whole mess right up." Jim's whisper against his mouth is stinging. Hepats his hand against the bar top. "Never you worry, love."

By Jim's side, he can be an adjunct of somebody else, some second part of a machine that knows how it wants to run, an organism that knows what it's doing.

"Now, didn't you have something you wanted to say to your friend?" Low, tugging, a stage whisper.

"I cannot think of anyone in the world with whom I have less to discuss." 

 

The woman leaves them at the door, and off they go. Sherlock leaves, and it's John who stays.

**

Jim's fingers trace figure-eights on the back of Sherlock's hand as it lies braced on the theatre seat armrest. The cinema screen is tall before them and the blood thundering through his veins from injection site to heart drowns out the soundtrack of whining strings. But not that voice. 

"You could have her, you know. Would you like that, Sherlock?"

"I beg your pardon." 

"Only kidding! And besides, she's _much_ too expensive."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! This chapter isn't too long, but I want to get things moving again. This is turning out more like a series of vignettes than one single longfic, but owww.

**Author's Note:**

> Content notes: partner abuse (physical, emotional, including gaslighting); drug addiction; overdoses and suicide attempts; threats of same; general mental health issues; infidelity; internalized homophobia; background suggestions of childhood abuse, including sexual abuse.


End file.
